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"Author Shale Horowitz employs both statistical evidence and historical case studies of the eight new nations to determine that ethnic conflict entangles, distracts, and destabilizes reformist democratic governments, while making it easier for authoritarian leaders to seize and consolidate power. As expected, economic backwardness worsens these tendencies, but Horowitz finds that powerful reform-minded nationalist ideologies can function as antidotes." "The comprehensiveness of the treatment, use of both qualitative and quantitative analysis, and focus on standard concepts from comparative politics make this book an excellent tool for classroom use, as well as a ground-breaking analysis for scholars."--BOOK JACKET.
A study of power in the middle ages: the Nevilles of Raby, who included among their members Warwick the Kingmaker, was one of the major baronial families in England. The story of the Neville family is a fascinating one. From their inconspicuous beginnings in Lincolnshire after the Norman Conquest, by the fourteenth century the Nevilles of Raby were among the most influential groups in the north of England, virtually ruling the area by means of the royal offices they held, and their political power reached its zenith in the fifteenth century with Richard de Neville, earl of Warwick, the so-called Kingmaker. This new study aims to answer the question of how a family of knightly status but with no special prominence was able to rise to such heights, tracing its growth and development through a careful examination of surviving documents; it also illustrates how the governance of medieval England worked with the cooperation of baronial families in a pragmatic manner, quite apart from any abstract legal or constitutional principles. CHARLES R. YOUNG is Professor Emeritusof History at Duke University.
Now in a completely updated second edition, this textbook has become a favorite for the introductory undergraduate course in comparative politics. It features ten theoretically and historically grounded country studies that show how the three major concepts of comparative analysis - interests, identities, and institutions - shape the politics of nations. Throughout the presentation, countries appear in the context of a changing global order that creates challenges to each country's path of development. These challenges frequently alter domestic interests and identities, and force countries to find new institutional solutions to the problems of modern politics. Written in a style free of heavy-handed jargon and organized to address the concerns of contemporary comparativists, this textbook provides students with the conceptual tools and historical background they need to understand the politics of our complex world.
The collapse of communism marked the close of an era of world history. What took place in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1991, in the eyes of its proponents, constituted a "great experiment" in the application of new modes of organization to social life, the largest such experiment in history. The Strange Death of Soviet Communism, which first appeared as a special issue of The National Interest, brings together leading scholars of Soviet history, who show why the experiment failed and how it has destroyed the laboratory of socialist utopias.Francis Fukuyama considers the role of long-term social and intellectual modernization while Vladimir Kontorovich examines the related factor of econ...
This book breaks new ground by systematically examining China's capitalist transformation through several comparative lenses. The great majority of research on China to date has consisted of single-country studies. This is the result of the methodological demands of studying China and a sense of the country's distinctiveness due to its grand size and long history. The moniker Middle Kingdom, a direct translation of the Chinese-language word for China, is one of the most prominent symbols of the country's supposed uniqueness. Composed of contributions from leading specialists on China's political economy, this volume demonstrates the benefits of systematically comparing China with other countries, including France, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Doing so puts the People's Republic in a light not available through other approaches, and it provides a chance to consider political theories by including an important case too often left out of studies.
Peter Rutland analyzes the role played by regional and local organs of the Soviet Communist Party in economic management from 1970 to 1989. Using a range of Soviet political and economic journals, newspapers and academic publications, he examines Communist Party economic interventions in construction, energy, transport, consumer goods, and agriculture. He convincingly argues that party interventions hindered rather than assisted the search for efficiency in the Soviet economy and represent a major obstacle to the current economic reform movement.
This is the first major assessment of the role of the presidency in Russia's difficult transition form communist rule. Huskey analyzes the establishment and functioning of the Russian presidency as an institution and in relation to the other leading institutions of state: the government, parliament, courts, and regional authorities. Although this is not a biography of the first president, Boris Yeltsin, his allies and his rivals loom large in the study of a critical phase in the creation of a new Russian political system.
Corporate Governance Lessons from Transition Economy Reforms explores a timely topic at the intersection of economics, law, and policy reform. To date, most sophisticated theoretical work on corporate governance has focused on advanced market economies. In post-socialist countries, corporate finance and transition economics scholars have often done little more than convey the received theory to transition policymakers. This volume focuses, for the first time, on the reverse concern: what, if anything, do the reform experiences of transition countries teach about corporate governance theory more generally? To investigate this question, Merritt Fox and Michael Heller have assembled a stellar g...
The premier source for a comprehensive update and overview of developments in the most rapidly changing region in the world. Each edition features thematic coverage of regional, political, and economic developments. Chapters on every country of the region cover essential historical background as well as current developments and domestic and foreign policy issues. Supplementing the chapters are maps, data boxes, documents, and sidebars.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has developed a powerful business community and a potent network of transnational organized groups. Russian Business Power explores the powerful impact these new actors are having on the evolution of the Russian state and its foreign behaviour. Unlike other books, which focus either on Russia's foreign and security policy, or on the evolution of Russian business, legal and illegal, within the context of Russia's domestic transition, this book considers how far Russia's foreign and security policy is shaped by business. It considers a wide range of issues, including energy, the arms trade, international drug flows, and human trafficking, and examines the impact of Russian business in Russia's dealings with Western and Eastern Europe, the Caspian, the Caucasus and the Far East.